Maternity leave’s pregnant pause

Under fire from all angles, European Commissioner Věra Jourová is taking the controversial step of withdrawing a proposal to ensure all new mothers in Europe receive 18 weeks of paid maternity leave.

But Jourová tells POLITICO that far from shrinking her ambitions, however, she plans to come back with a broader and deeper set of proposals in 2016.

The future of any plan is very much in doubt: women’s rights organizations and left-wing MEPs are angry that the current proposal is being pulled, and right-leaning governments say it goes too far and amounts to meddling in their affairs.

Jourová says her new equality plan will try to satisfy all sides by delivering the ambition progressives want to see, but will aim to build on an alliance with number-crunchers, use the language of “flexibility” and argue that the reforms are mostly aimed at economic prosperity, not social change.

The overhaul in approach was forced by the European Commission, which announced in December that the Council and Parliament had six months to break a deadlock on the languishing legislation or else it would be pulled from consideration.

Her goal now is to woo regulation-shy national governments, who are eager to wield their veto-power on family law matters in EU-level legislation.

“Our answers have to be flexible because we cannot order the member states,” says Jourová, the commissioner for justice, consumers and general equality.

The proposal is set to be an interlocking set of measures, with the intention “to bring more women into the labor market.” While details will depend on a lengthy public consultation, the approach is set to shift the women’s equality debate in Europe out of rights-based rhetoric and firmly into economic terrain.

Female participation in the labor force ranges from 41 percent in Greece to 73 percent in Sweden, and is lower than men in all European countries.

She’d rather add women into the workforce than bail out countries that can no longer afford the elaborate promises of their welfare systems.

The Commission in 2010 said it wanted equal participation between men and women by 2020, but has failed to such an extent that at the rate of progress achieved since 2008 the gap will remain until 2081.

Jourová is trying to entice countries that may not like the social policy aspects of the plan by pointing out that most European countries will fail to meet their budget targets in coming years if they don’t change their ways. She’d rather add women into the workforce than bail out countries that can no longer afford the elaborate promises of their welfare systems.

“This is a big economic issue,” she says, and is working closely with employment commissioner Marianne Thyssen and Vice President Valdis Dombrovkis, the man in charge of the “European Semester” — a system for monitoring national budgets from Brussels — to ensure the matter is not sidelined as a ‘soft’ or ‘rights’ issue.

She is already facing opposition. While European women face pensions on average 40 percent lower than men because the dominant pay-as-you-earn pension schemes in Europe reward length of service, Jourová recalls a recent conversation on pensions: “The Bulgarian Minister said women don’t contribute as much financially to the state, so they deserve less.”

There is also a tight-rope to walk on the language of “flexibility.” It appeals to Scandinavia, the Baltics, Netherlands, the UK and Ireland, but is little more than a synonym for lower standards and pay the closer you move to the Mediterranean.

To win over recalcitrant countries, Jourová’s version of flexibility includes putting a value on unpaid labor (done mostly by women) in order to narrow the “pension gap” caused by lower wages and time away from work raising children. She’s also open to better protections for women against pregnancy-related dismissal, support for mothers stuck caring for both children and parents and paying men to be involved in raising their children.

While better childcare is “not just about bricks and asphalt” there’ll also be a massive push to fund new education and child-care infrastructure using a slice of the €340 billion the EU is allocating to developing its poorer regions between now and 2020. Current childcare infrastructure funding from the EU is sporadic and small scale.

This, says Jourová, is another front in the economic fight: showing newer EU countries that prioritizing gender equality is not only right, but a way to close the wealth gap with neighbors and rivals.

All of this is a long way from a year ago, while ironing at home in Prague, that Jourová decided to get more involved in European politics.

Three months later, courtesy of a bold phone call to her party leader and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s battle to get national leaders to deliver “#TenOrMore” female European commissioners, she found herself in Brussels. The transition from Ironing Lady to Iron Lady has been anything but smooth.

Handed three files stuck in bitter stalemates at the European Council, two remain blocked (data protection and women on boards), and the third — maternity leave — is now in ashes.

The former Maternity Leave Directive “was quite narrow” Jourová says, and largely redundant now that all European women are guaranteed at least 14 weeks (and sometimes 52 weeks) maternity leave through a patchwork of national legislation. “I am convinced we should bring legislation with pan-EU effect, and this is no longer the case with the Maternity Leave Directive.”